Diabolum Infra
by Bubble Wrapped Kitty
Summary: A collection of prompt-based drabbles. 6. - Franklin "Foggy" Nelson is not, by nature, a violent person.
1. Maestus Symphonia

AN: So my muse, who has been hiding beneath the sofa for months and refusing to come out, has suddenly returned and latched onto this fandom after I binge-watched the show in like two days. She says it's because of the complex characters; I think she's just drawn to Charlie Cox's particularly fine looking ass. We've agreed to disagree.

Either way, because my mind is stuck in Daredevil mode for the time being, I've decided to do what I always do when I'm hung up on a fandom. Drabble collections! I found a list of random prompts online (I'd give the url here but FFN won't let me, so if you're really all that curious you can message me) and am steadily working my way through writing an entry for each one. They will be technically unrelated, although I'm trying to keep them all within canon as much as possible, and pairings and such will vary - as will POV, tenses, and writing style, most likely. If you have anything you'd like to see, please suggest it. Muse is clamoring to write more and I'm perfectly willing to take advantage of her being cooperative for once.

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Prompt: Violinists or violin.

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Maestus Symphonia

It takes longer than he is willing to admit to figure out what that subtle smell that Karen sometimes carries with her belongs to, the one that only ever lingers on her hands and then only on certain days. The days when she comes in tired but with a steadier heart rate than the day before. Pine and sap and grit and dry skin and wood and earth and dust. He'll blame it on lack of familiarity later, but when it happens, when he finally puts the pieces together, it strikes him like a bolt of lightning.

Karen is teasing him; he's been carding a hand through his hair in stress while researching for their newest case so his fringe is sticking up slightly. She cocks a hip against the corner of his desk and gently combs his hair back down. As her fingertips brush over his brow and he finally feels the little hard ridges through the centres of the pads that he's somehow never noticed before, it hits him all at once.

"Rosin," he says aloud, interrupting her mid-sentence with his surprise. He tilts his face toward her hand and inhales again through his nose, breathing in the scent again and feeling certain in his conclusion.

"What?" Karen asks in confusion.

"Rosin, on your fingertips," Matt clarifies, instinctively leaning back in his chair to put a more acceptable amount of distance between them. "The smell's been bothering me for a while, couldn't figure it out. That is it, right? I didn't know you played the violin."

Karen makes an embarrassed noise and he can feel the wave of heat coming from her as the blood rushes to her face. She ducks her head, hiding behind the curtain of her hair - a draft of _vanillalilaclavenderchemicals_ , a generic scented shampoo she's just recently started using. "Foggy's right," she says finally, and when she lifts her head he can hear her smile. "You are really good at that."

A quick grin flashes across his face, a sharp upward turn of his lips that never fails to make Karen's heart rate jump in response. "It's a gift," he says modestly, shrugging, although more shallowly than usual because of the stitches beneath his arm he can't let her know about. Karen's laugh is slightly stilted, but she doesn't make to move away so he can tell he hasn't offended her. There's something about the nervous energy thrumming through her muscles that tells him she isn't finished so he waits, his gaze hovering somewhere near her elbow and trying not to look too expectant.

"It's a stress thing," she admits after a minute of hesitant quiet. "I took lessons in high school. I was never very great, just fifth chair and even then only 'cause Lydia Trackston quit, but it was always really calming, you know? Just focusing on the notes and the movements and letting the rest of the world disappear under the music. I don't play a lot anymore, well more now than I did a few years ago, but mostly just when I - I dunno..."

"Need an escape?" Matt offers.

Karen nods distractedly, and then hastily sputters and says, "Sorry, I nodded again. Yes."

"Music is good for that," he agrees. "I'd like to hear you play sometime."

"No you wouldn't," she counters with a breathy laugh. "Like I said, I'm not very good."

Matt shrugs. "I've always been fond of the violin. Sounds good, easier to listen to than some instruments. Can't stand piccolos, it's like being stabbed in the ears. Never was very good at music myself though. Learned a little organ at the orphanage, but nothing more than that."

"I played the trumpet in elementary school," Foggy chimes in from the doorway, the wood groaning as he leans against the frame. Karen jumps slightly but Matt had heard him coming so he merely tips his head in that direction, his lips quirking in amusement. "Between the three of us, we could start a band."

"With a violin, organ, and trumpet?" Karen asks and her scepticism is thick and dripping, but she's getting better at humouring their odd jokes and Foggy's ridiculous flights of fancy. Settling into their rhythm and banter. "Odd mix. What would we call our band?"

"Avocados at Law?" Matt suggests, unable to stop the grin that splits his face. The other two break out in laughter; Foggy loud and booming at the old joke and Karen fluttery and bright as she just enjoys the easiness of it all. Matt joins in and lets himself revel in the comfort, the freedom of this moment.

Karen is the first to settle herself, standing up and smoothing down her skirt. "Alright, Avocados, we really need to get back to work if we're going to have this ready for the hearing."

And a few nights later, when Karen has been particularly strung-out and edgy at work, Matt slips by her new apartment in the middle of the night. He crouches on the gravel roof and extends his senses, searching out a particular noise amongst all of the voices and sleepy breaths and electronics humming away with purpose. There, on the third floor, he picks it out. Violin music, slow and sad and mournful, but somehow it unwinds something inside of him that he didn't realise was twisted too tight. He sits and listens to the way that her heart rate shifts, acting as a natural metronome for the music, and the floorboards whine beneath her feet as she sways back and forth with the power of the song. He can feel the way she pours all of her stress and sadness and fear into the music until it makes his heart clench painfully.

The sound of gunfire from four blocks over grabs his attention and Matt rushes away into the darkness to do his job, but every few weeks, when he can tell that the stress and anxiety is getting to her, Matt heads over to Karen's and listens to her play it all away and when she's done, he feels a little better himself.


	2. Sopio

Prompt: Insomnia

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Sopio

After losing his sight, after all of his other senses amplified to compensate, sleep was not something that came easily for Matt. For some people, insomnia is caused by the inability to turn off their mind and their thoughts. For Matt, it happened because he couldn't turn off everything else; his ears and nose and mouth and skin, all flooding him with input that wouldn't let him find a moment's peace.

It was worst at the very beginning, in those first few months where he still woke up and opened his eyes, expecting in the back of his mind for the influx of colors that would solidify the world around him. He couldn't control it then, the way his ears sought out every infinitesimal noise and dragged it into his head like a perpetual vacuum of sound. Days went by where he'd lie awake, hands pressed tight over his ears in a vain attempt to _quietquietsilencemakeit **STOP** _ until the doctors worried and injected drugs into his IV that sucked him under like quicksand.

When he finally left the hospital it was with a prescription for sleep aids that his dad couldn't afford to fill but did anyway. Matt only took them when he absolutely had to, when the lack of sleep made him slow and clumsy and stupid, in an attempt to make them last longer. It took time but eventually his body adjusted, learned to function on less sleep in the same way his fingers learned to decipher the grids of dots on the pages of his workbooks and his arm learned the proper position and patterns for using his cane. The insomnia was a symptom of his blindness, and he learned to deal with it just like all the others.

Stick, despite being an ass and unnecessarily cruel sometimes, did help with his sleeping problems. His lessons, on meditation and centering and control over his body, taught him how to shut his senses down. When night came and he was finally allowed to collapse into bed, tired and sore and with his heart still thudding from exertion, he called on those skills to turn the focus of his senses inward. He listened to his heart and his breathing, the gentle pulse of blood gliding beneath his skin, the ache and pull of muscles that were tearing and rebuilding to make themselves stronger. It wasn't a perfect system, and sometimes his mind betrayed him, but it made things easier. His body became his solace and for the first time since the accident he was able to sleep without pills most nights.

College was a frightening new experience for him, not that he'd ever admit that to anyone. Columbia University's campus was a completely different playground, separate and wild compared to the familiar streets and buildings of Hell's Kitchen that were permanently ingrained into his soul now. For the first time in his life he would have to share a room with someone, a cramped and echoing dormitory provided by his scholarship, with paper thin walls keeping the hundreds and hundreds of other voices out. It might've been better for his sleep cycle to pay extra to have his own room, or even find a place off campus, but the money his father had left him was starting to run thin and it wasn't like he could easily go out and find a part-time job on top of his full schedule.

Besides, Murdock boys didn't back down from a challenge.

So Matt traced his fingers over the engraved plates on the doors until he found room 312 and he knocked once before opening the door. The smells reached out to him, cotton and flannel and denim and musk and cheap hair product and day old crisps and paper and dust and sickly sweet soda bubbling against the inside of the open aluminum can. The sounds of movement from every direction, seeping through the walls, gave him a general impression of the room, but his attention was immediately drawn to the eager heart beat of the room's only occupant.

Foggy Nelson turned out to be nothing like Matt was expecting from a roommate. He'd spent the summer preparing to use the blindness as a way to withdraw, to secretly guilt his roommate into leaving him be and causing enough subtle awkwardness to drive him away completely. Matt didn't make friends and he didn't want to spend the next year with the sympathetic gaze weighing on him from across the room. He was better off alone than dealing with that. Instead he found Foggy, whose blunt awkwardness and unbridled enthusiasm wormed its way through his defenses. For the first time in his life he'd found someone who made him feel real, good, whole. Normal.

Matt and Foggy became instantly inseparable, natural extensions of each other, and Matt grew to recognize the sounds of his best friend's body as well as his own. The thud of his heart, naturally faster than Matt's because of his aversion to exercise. The gust of his lungs, only slightly asthmatic but always shallower and restricted on days when the humidity was thick in the air and the moisture muffled everything. The scraping friction of his skin when he twisted his hands together from stress, the rub and drag and slight smell of sweat it always produced. The whisper of his fingers carding through his hair, combing it back off his face whenever they were intently poring over textbooks. Every noise and smell and texture was memorized and cataloged and filed away in Matt's mental image of home and safety and self.

In the end, it was sharing a room - the thing he'd been so worried about - that actually helped him the most. On nights when his brain was too fried from hours of reciting and cramming and filling it with so many laws and bylaws and technicalities and protocols that it felt like it would burst out of his skull, he couldn't draw all of his focus inward. Too much strain on that already exhausted muscle in his head. It was easier to find something else to sink into, to let consume him, and that thing became Foggy. Most nights he was asleep first as Matt continued to trace his fingers over pages in the dark until they grew numb, and then Matt would slip down into his bed and just listen.

He listened to the scuff of fabric on fabric - flannel pajamas pants on cotton sheets - as Foggy found a comfortable spot. He listened to the gradual release of tension as muscles uncoiled and went languid. He listened to the slowing of heart and lungs as his body slipped into stasis. Foggy always snored, a low droning buzz like a far off chainsaw embedded in soft wood (mahogany or walnut), but it was worse when he laid on his left side. Nightmares made his legs twitch and his hands scratch at the sheets like he was trying to grasp something he couldn't hold. Whenever he was most stressed, usually in the weeks leading up to exams, he tended to talk in his sleep; not fully articulate words, but anxious, half-formed syllables dripping from lips that barely moved.

So Matt lay back, surrounded himself in the sounds of _homesafetyself_ , and he slept.


	3. On Target

AN: This was meant to be purely a funny little fluff piece and somehow managed to still get a little angsty. These two do so love their angst.

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Prompt: Paper Aeroplanes

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On Target

The first time he does it, it's purely a bored impulse.

They have been studying for hours that feel like days, and Foggy is starting to go a little bit crazy. And not even the fun sort of crazy he normally is, but a genuine, worrisome, climbing-the-walls kind of crazy. He thinks his brain might've actually melted and is one punctured eardrum away from pouring out his skull like a demented tea kettle. The words on the pages of his textbook keep morphing and blurring together into languages even harder to decipher than Punjabi.

Of course on the room's other bed, Matt is his normal, cool-as-a-cucumber self. He's cross-legged on the mattress in the middle of a ring of textbooks, his laptop, and his refreshable braille reader. An earphone trails from one ear while he runs his finger across the reader, ever the diligent student. The stress of the upcoming finals is completely invisible and if Foggy didn't know better he'd think Matt wasn't worried at all. But of course he is. Matt is inconsolable if he gets anything less than an A on a test. He's just also ridiculously smart, on top of being unnaturally good looking. Bastard.

Foggy glances down at the stacks of handwritten notes around him and as his eyes trace along the creases in one paper that had been shoved rather unceremoniously into his bag, an idea occurs. Grinning, he sets about folding a fresh sheet of paper with clinical precision. When he has the paper folded down to a sharp triangle, he lifts it, aims, and sends it sailing.

The paper aeroplane glides silently across the room, directly on par to hit Matt in the ear. Foggy waits expectantly, smirking, and -

Without taking his attention away from his studying, Matt uses his free hand to bat the aeroplane out of the air a split second before it hits him. The crumpled aircraft dovetails away to settle on the floor dejectedly.

"Ah man, c'mon, that's not fair," Foggy complains loudly. "How do you do that?"

Matt's lips twist up on one side and he tilts his head in Foggy's direction. "I could hear you folding the paper, Fog, you're not exactly subtle."

"Dude, you're like a ninja sometimes," Foggy grouses but he's not actually that bothered. At the very least, Matt's paying attention to him instead of his studying now so he's less bored. "That's a cool trick, actually, we should use it sometime. Might impress the girls."

"I hardly think the girls will flock to the guy who throws things at a blind guy," Matt points out.

"I will concede to that, counselor," Foggy says. "Doesn't matter, I'll get you eventually. You can't be a ninja all the time." Matt smirks but says nothing, already fully invested in his texts again.

After that it becomes something of a game, although his mom would undoubtedly cuff him around the head if she ever heard him refer to throwing things at his blind best friend as a game. Foggy might agree with her if it weren't for the fact that, without fail, Matt always manages to knock the aeroplanes out of the sky or duck out of the way before they can reach him. Foggy's defeated groans are met with a cocky smirk and they return to whatever they were doing before. The game continues through college, through their internship, and into the shabby three-room office they claim as their own. Karen shoots him mildly exasperated looks whenever he does it while the three of them are researching cases together, but Matt always gets that sideways grin each time and so she lets it slide.

Of course then everything happens with the Man in the Mask and Matt nearly dying and Wilson Fisk and Daredevil, and silly games with paper aeroplanes slip to the back of Foggy's mind in the madness that his life has become in just a few short months. His relationship with Matt is strained and the easy, playful banter that was once their primary form of communication has become forced and uncertain. It takes time and effort, and they stumble and falter so many times, but gradually they are rebuilding. Not what they once had - because that Matt-and-Foggy is gone - but on its foundation they are creating something new, something stronger and more solid.

So everything changes one day when Foggy is sitting at his desk, elbows deep in notes and legal books for a case he's currently working. He hears Matt call out a quick, "Hey Fog," and he looks over just in time for something to tap against his forehead and then fall onto his desk. His eyes skate over the delicately folded aeroplane, dark ink bleeding through the white page, and he unfolds it curiously. Printed in the middle, in an unpracticed, childish scrawl, are two words.

 _I WIN_

And as Foggy glances back up at his best friend leaning casually in the doorframe, he bursts out laughing in a genuine, carefree way that he hasn't felt capable of in ages. "You little shit," he complains, crumbling up the paper and hucking it at Matt's chest. (Matt, of course, catches it.) "I will still get you."

Matt's beaming as he pushes up off the doorframe. As he heads back to his office, he throws back over his shoulder a very sarcastic, "Sure you will." And Foggy doesn't mind so much if he ever actually succeeds in their little game, because this is them and this is normal, and that's what really counts.

Although it's sure as hell not going to stop him from trying.


	4. Sanctuarium in Natura

AN: Combined a couple prompts for this one because they worked too well together.

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Prompt(s): Dandelion seeds, feathers, and dragonfly toes.

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Sanctuarium in Natura

New York City isn't exactly an easy place to find a quiet spot for relaxing. Too many heartbeats, everywhere, crushing and shifting and swirling about like motes of dust in a beam of sunlight. Noise and pressure and bodies swarm around him in every direction, overlaid by traffic and construction and a million other sounds all clamoring for his attention. Sometimes Matt wonders if life might be easier if he moved out west somewhere, to a place with wide open fields and farms instead of this overpopulated concrete jungle, but in the end he can't even seriously consider it. Hell's Kitchen is home.

So he learns to control it, learns to master his body and his senses so he can manage to live a relatively normal life without constantly being sidelined by sensory overloads like those early days in the hospital. It helps, and daily meditation makes it easier to keep his centre amid the screeching, growling, rumbling chaos of the city. Most days it doesn't bother him in the least and he can survive in the relative quiet of his top floor apartment and the office in the nearly abandoned building that hasn't quite yet been refilled since The Incident.

Today is not one of those days.

* * *

He hadn't been looking for it when he found it, which was the way of such things, he supposed. Standing in front of the church, he had been searching out Father Lantom's familiar presence - gait wavered by age and arthritis that he refused to acknowledge, heavy starched shirt with the collar that scratched against his Adam's apple, the scent of lemon and candle wax and too much sugar in his daily lattes, heart that beat like a balm, calm and steady and with a commanding, forcefulness like a captain leading his men into the breach. He found it, not in any of the usual places, but instead coming from behind the brick building.

Curious, Matt had followed the edge of the building around until he entered the little garden tucked into the shadow of the steeple. The place was cool and gentle, sheltered on one side by a large stone building that had been half-demolished in The Incident and hadn't been restored, and on the other side by the sturdy back of the church. It was mid-autumn at the time and the little square of grass and stone path was interspersed with clusters of flowers that were drying out, brittle and cracking in each gust of wind, little flecks blowing away in a never-ending whirl of decay.

Father Lantom glanced up when Matt's cane tapped against the path. "Matthew," he greeted. He was kneeling in the grass, and he tugged, pulling a weed from the garden in a spray of dirt. Matt heard the series of grating clicks as the individual seeds broke away from the bulb at the motion - _a dandelion_ , he acknowledged somewhere in the back of his mind - and drift away on a lonely zephyr. Father Lantom huffed slightly and deposited the remainder of the weed into a nearby wheelbarrow. "I was just finishing up here, going to head in and have a latte. Care to join me?"

"Actually," Matt hesitated for a moment, cocking his head as he let his senses bask in the relative calm of the little garden, "I think I'd just like to sit here for a while."

Father Lantom must have seen something in his face because he didn't wheedle the way he normally did when Matt tried to brush him off. He stood up with a puff, dusted bits of dry grass from his pants, and then left without another word. Matt found his way to a little stone bench tucked beneath a drooping cherry tree and made himself comfortable.

It was far from perfect, but he was shielded from the majority of the city noises by the buildings that stood on either side like sentinels. Tentatively, he released the tight leash on his senses and found that he wasn't immediately overwhelmed. Plants and moisture, stone and dust. It was comforting and protected and for the first time in ages Matt felt like he could stop fighting so hard just to exist.

* * *

On days when the entire world was simply too much to bear, Matt made his way to the church garden. It was rarely occupied at the times he showed up, either ridiculously early in the morning before heading into the office or in the deepest hours of the night before heading out onto the streets. Father Lantom always seemed to be able to tell when he needed the peace, and when Matt bypassed the church doors to head for the garden, he gave him a wide berth. He waited, patient and compassionate like a good Catholic, until Matt came out on his own, and was there to greet him with a latte and firm advice.

* * *

It had been a long night, dealing with a child trafficking ring down by the docks, and the whole affair had left him feeling raw and ragged. Emotions humming too close to the surface and making it difficult to control himself. Cases with kids tended to do that to him, which he reasoned was a totally rational response, really. Still, it was going to make concentrating on the casework difficult, and he already put too much of the work on Foggy, so he got up early and traced the familiar path to the church.

As usual, there was no one when he entered the garden and made his way to the bench he had claimed as his own. He propped his cane against the side and deposited his laptop bag on the seat beside him. His glasses went into his breast pocket and he tilted his head back, letting his eyes drop shut. One deep breath in and then he released it all.

The sudden, hypnotic presence of nature washed over him. It was late spring, the days just beginning to turn from damp and muggy to dry and brittle. Everything - the slightly-too-long grass, the little rounded spots of perennials recently planted, the vines that crept over the iron fence and up the back of the stone church, the tiny, well-trimmed trees that edged the garden - all of them smelled vibrant and springy and green.

The constant, low buzz of life swam around him. A bird overhead was hopping around in its nest, adjusting and readjusting the little bits of twig to make a more secure hollow for the little eggs - three tiny, lightning-fast heartbeats. The mother bird's feathers made soft, whispery sounds as they flittered in the air to help it keep balance while it worked. A cat - female and in heat, by the smell - had taken up residence beneath the lilac bush and it was grooming itself with a lazy contentment, the burrs on its tongue scraping and dragging through the fur. He could even hear the bugs, the hundreds and thousands of insects flying and crawling and climbing. Air was disturbed in tiny whorls by a butterfly's wings, a spider was making a meal of a particularly crunchy little thing that had strayed into its gossamer webs, a worm pushed and pulled its way through the damp earth, the contract and stretch of its muscles a natural rhythm. On a flower above his head he heard the drone of wings and the gentle tap of microscopic feet alighting on a closed bud. Not a butterfly that time - _a dragonfly_ , he thought.

Matt leaned back and let himself melt into the comfort of the garden, protected from the outside world by the walls of Hell's Kitchen and God. Here he was allowed to feel safe, to feel sheltered, to feel vulnerable. So while his hyper-senses were distracted by nature, his mind drew forth the memories. The stink of fish and refuse, the thundering heartbeats of bodies - too little, too fragile, too innocent for this - and gasps of breath, the salty sweetness of tears on sweaty skin. The fear, so much fear, and confusion and homesickness and pure unadulterated panic when men with guns pawed at their clothes and hair and skin. They had been only children, lost and alone in a terrifying new world they didn't understand, and it had been too much for him.

Because some part of him, that distant former self hidden away in the back of his mind behind all of the training Stick had (and then hadn't) given him, had understood. The little boy inside of him that he could never completely get away from had related. Enough that the devil had been released in a way he hadn't done since Fisk had gone to jail. Those men who thought that the lives and innocence of children were currency to be traded would not bother anyone for a very long time.

Once his emotions had run their course, Matt straightened up on the bench. He dragged the backs of his wrists over his face, wiping away the salt-tinged moisture that was drying on his skin, and replaced his sunglasses. Slowly, carefully, he began to draw his senses back under his command. It was easier now, now that the demons of the night were faced and dealt with and no longer scratching at the surface of his mind. Once he was finished, he gathered his cane, took one last deep breath of the garden, and then headed for the front of the church.

"Good morning, Matthew. How are you?" Father Lantom asked from the open doors of the church.

Matthew took stock, evaluated himself the way he did a new potential client, and then nodded. "Better. Much better."


	5. Canticum Amicitia

Prompt: (S)he sings.

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Canticum Amicitia

There are a great many things about living with Foggy Nelson that Matt is still getting used to. Foggy might've adjusted to having a blind roommate well enough that he's pretty good about keeping his things out of the way, but somehow there are always stray socks on the floor, singles laid out in weird places, and really how many pairs does the guy go through in a day because for the life of him Matt can't make those numbers add up right. He snores and occasionally talks in his sleep, though Matt doesn't mind the latter so much because at least it's funny. He's overly fond of highly-processed cheese-flavored snacks, and when they're studying he has a weird habit of repeatedly combing his hair back into a ponytail only to tug it out again minutes later in some weird rinse-and-repeat cycle.

Of all the strange things he does, the one that always seems to perplex Matt the most is that Foggy sings. A lot. And badly.

He sings under his breath when he's making breakfast at their little kitchenette. He sings when he's tidying, loudly because his earphones block the sound. He tends to sing more when Matt's not there, although he can always hear him from the ground floor when he comes back from classes. And Foggy goes full-on Broadway diva in the showers down the hall, which never fails to leave Matt giggling over his textbooks as he hears the poor saps with rooms closest to the communal showers grumbling about it.

Music isn't something Matt fully understands (although the noises that Foggy produces some days can hardly be considered 'music' in even the broadest sense.) It was never a huge part of his life growing up, and the most experience he had with it was the classic rock that sometimes played over the grainy speakers in the gym where his dad had trained. After his dad died, his music was fairly limited to hymnals at mass. It wasn't like the nuns let them sit around listening to Top 40 radio. Stick, of course, hated music, claiming it was sentimental distractions, and for a long time Matt held onto that belief.

(This would all change when Foggy's grandfather leaves him a vintage record player and Matt falls in love with the crackle and hiss of vinyl coming to life, but that's a different story altogether.)

Matt gets the story of Foggy's love of music one night when they're stumbling home from the local dive bar, celebrating passing their first semester of law school. Foggy is leaning against Matt just as much as leading him, belting out some showtune from a play Matt's sure he's never heard of - something about a cat, he thinks, but that's ridiculous because who sings about cats?

"You sing a lot," Matt points out after Foggy collapses into giggles in the middle of the chorus.

"Because music is good," Foggy says emphatically. "Should come to my house for Christmas, whole family sings. Nelsons like to sing."

"Are they all as bad as you?" Matt asks, smirking.

"Hey!" Foggy objects, removing his arm from Matt's shoulders to shove him lightly. Caught off guard, Matt trips off the sidewalk into the snow. Foggy calls out, "Bench!" a split second before Matt hits it with his leg. Matt collapses onto the cold metal, laughing, and a moment later Foggy slumps down next to him.

"I sing great," Foggy says, picking up the thread of conversation again. "Did all kindsa plays when I was a kid. S'a Nelson thing. Got lead roles all through el'mentry school."

"What happened?" Matt asks, sensing there's more to the story.

"Prubety," Foggy says sagely. Then he frowns and giggles. "Pru-ber-ty. Prube- Ah, shit, you know what I mean."

"Puberty?" Matt offers between laughs.

"Yeah, that one," Foggy says. "Traded in my pretty singin' voice for this manly sexy voice." Matt snorts. "Shut up, you know it's sexy." Foggy's head falls against the back of the bench and he lets out a gusty breath. "Rest the fam still does 'em though. Plays. Meg was gonna go Broadway, 'fore she got pregnant and decided she'd rather repopulate the earth with little Nelson-Martinez hybrids."

Matt cocks his head, trying to pinpoint the emotion under the slur. "You miss it?"

"Sometimes," Foggy agrees. That's one thing Matt loves about his new best friend; Foggy doesn't pussyfoot or try to hide his feelings behind being macho. If he's feeling something, he has no problems admitting to it. Matt wishes he was that brave. "Liked being up there, in front o' people. S'why I 'cided to become a lawyer, you know?"

"Cause you're an attention whore?"

Foggy huffs and shoves Matt again. "I've just always been good at talking in front of people. Theatre teacher suggested I try debate, and I was good. Damn good." Foggy sighs and then stands up with a groan. "C'mon, let's go home. This bench is freezing, so unless you're gonna use your bat-senses to find us a hot chick to warm me up before my ass turns into a butt-cicle, let's get inside."

"Butt-cicle," Matt echoes with a laugh. He holds out a hand and lets Foggy pull him to his feet, and then they stagger back to their dorm with their arms around each other.

After that day Foggy becomes a little less shy about singing in front of Matt, and Matt never complains. He can hear it, now, the way that the music makes Foggy's heart rate pick up. Smells the endorphins. Music makes Foggy happy, and some strange part of Matt that still isn't used to the idea of having friends finds he enjoys things that made Foggy happy.

And when Matt gets cajoled into going home for winter break with Foggy, he finds out his friend wasn't exaggerating. All of the Nelsons sing, even his eighty-something-year-old gran who wheezes her way through a string of Christmas carols with the best of them. Some of them, like his dad and two of his sisters, are even really good at it.

Matt might be just a little biased, but he still prefers Foggy's off-key, uninhibited singing most.


	6. Defending Your Honor

Prompt: Mud

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Franklin "Foggy" Nelson is not, by nature, a violent person. That's not to say he doesn't like confrontation, because he does. Thrives on it, sometimes. It's just that he's always had a way with words and he learns at an early age that he is just as good at talking his way out of trouble as he is talking into it.

The closest he ever comes to getting in a fight is when he shoves Mitchy Warner for tripping Hannah Gomez on the playground in the second grade. Mitchy doesn't look too happy to have been bodychecked by a kid a year younger, but the teacher monitoring recess notices the altercation and hurries over before things can escalate. It's in that moment, as he helps a teary-eyed Hannah up from the dirt, that Foggy realises he wants to defend people, protect the ones who are too weak to protect themselves.

He'd just really prefer to do it with words than with shoving from now on, if at all possible.

So he makes it through adolescence and all the way into university with his violence-free pledge still intact. He's only gotten better at arguing as the years go by and in his second year of law school he considers himself pretty damn capable of talking his way out of any predicament. To top it all off, he's now got Matt Murdock, a best friend who is just as good at it as he is - maybe better because he's pretty good at bailing Foggy out when he puts his foot in his mouth. Together they're kind of invincible.

Matt is pretty anti-fighting too which is cool with Foggy. He knows the stories from when they were kids, about Battlin' Jack Murdock whose best skill was his ability to take a hit. In one of the nights when Foggy and Matt are relaxing in their dorm after an exhausting week of exams, Matt is feeling particularly open and talks about how he'd promised his dad not to fight. To use his brains instead of his fists.

He'd been picked on a lot in school for his blindness - (something that had never really occurred to Foggy before; Matt's so confident and charming that it's hard to imagine people not being nice to him. Also it's just kind of a low blow to pick on a blind guy, in Foggy's opinion, even if he'll never say that out loud because that seems like the sorta thing that would piss Matt off). Matt admits that it had been hard for him not to fight back in school, but at the same time it always hurt because it constantly reminded him that he was different. That no matter how hard he worked or how much he tried, he would never be like everyone else.

Desperate to lighten the mood because he can see Matt retreating into that dark place he goes sometimes, Foggy proposes a toast to using the law to bitch-slap the world's bullies. Matt grins and lifts the bottle of cheap beer they smuggled into their dorm for Foggy to tap his own against it, and they enjoy the rest of the evening giggling over stories of their childhood.

It's mid-spring, getting closer to end of term exams every day, and the world outside seems to be comprised entirely of damp and muck. Foggy and Matt are walking back from a study session in the library, having a hypothetical argument about property law and attempting to avoid the puddles that the morning's rain left in the pavement. (Foggy can't figure out how, but Matt seems to be doing a much better job than he is.)

When it happens, the whole thing goes so quick that Foggy doesn't really process it until it's over. They're just passing a group of yuppie guys - the sort who got into Columbia by swinging in on daddy's purse-strings and legacy - headed the other direction when one of them lurches sideways. The lead guy collides with Matt, hard, sending him sprawling in a mud puddle with a startled yelp. His cane clatters away and his glasses fall off, and Matt immediately tries to search them out by clawing his fingers through the mud in front of him. As Foggy turns to help him, the frat guy laughs loudly. "Hey look, the mole's trying to burrow away."

Matt glances up, his wince barely visible. Without his glasses, he looks younger, innocent and vulnerable. In that moment, Foggy doesn't see his best friend, the one with confidence to spare and an incredible knack for rolling with the punches. He sees a scared kid, blind, confused, and hurt on more than a physical level.

He sees someone who needs protecting.

In one swift move, more graceful than he thought he was capable of, Foggy stands up and swings. The yuppie's nose cracks loudly under his fist and he staggers back, clutching his face. Breathing heavily, Foggy snaps, "Watch where you're going next time, yeah?" Then, without a second thought for the guys, he kneels down and grabs Matt's shoulder. "C'mon Matty."

Matt stands up, dripping mud from his clothes, while Foggy gathers up his cane and glasses. He cleans the lenses as best as he can on his shirt before pressing them into Matt's palm - he knows how much Matt hates not wearing them in public, doesn't like the way people stare at his eyes. Matt mumbles something that might be a thanks, and when Foggy bumps him with his elbow Matt grabs on for the lead tighter than usual.

Neither of them speaks until they're back in their dorm. Matt's awkwardly stripping out of his soaked clothes, carefully folding them onto his desk chair to avoid getting mud all over more than they already have. Foggy brings him a set of clean clothes from the methodically arranged dresser to find Matt staring in his direction thoughtfully, rubbing his hip which will surely be bruised come morning.

"You okay?" Foggy asks, nudging Matt's hand with the folded clothes.

"You punched that guy," Matt says like he's only just realizing it. Foggy makes a noncommittal noise and foists the clothes at him again. He knows Matt is fiercely independent and hopes he hasn't just crossed some line. "Like, you actually punched that guy. In the face."

"Well, I, uh," Foggy stumbles over his words, wondering what it is about Matt that always makes him lose all of that eloquence he used to possess. His brain is swimming a little, the adrenaline leaving him in a rush, and he feels equal parts exhausted and restless. He goes to wring his hands but is suddenly acutely aware of how much his hand fucking _hurts_ \- Jesus, was that guy's face made of brick or something?

"Thought you didn't believe in violence?" Matt asks curiously. Foggy looks up as Matt's head pops through the collar of his teeshirt and there's a vaguely bemused smile on his lips, the one he gets when he's teasing Foggy. The look reassures him and Foggy dares for a little open honesty.

"Yeah, well, there are loopholes in every law," he says, shrugs, trying to sound nonchalant.

Matt looks thoughtful at that, tips his head to the side slightly as his gaze settles somewhere over Foggy's shoulder. "I'm a loophole?"

Foggy snorts. "You are the exception to everyone's rules and you know it," he teases playfully. "And take full advantage of it."

"You aren't very good at flattery," Matt says dryly, but he's grinning. "You know, for a guy who doesn't like fighting, you have one hell of a right hook."

"How do you know?" Foggy asks, curious. He's not afraid of offending Matt with that; Matt's told him repeatedly that he likes the fact Foggy will ask the questions nobody else dares ask. Which is good because Foggy was born with a condition that affects the filter between his brain and his mouth - or more specifically he just doesn't have one.

"My dad was a boxer," Matt reminds him. "I know what a good hit sounds like. I also know what a broken nose sounds like." Foggy kinds of hates himself for it, but he feels a little flush of pride. Matt wanders around him to the little refrigerator tucked into the kitchenette and pulls a bag of frozen vegetables out of the freezer drawer.

"What's this for?" Foggy asks when Matt presses the bag, wrapped in a hand towel, into his good hand. In response, Matt touches the back of his right hand lightly - their unspoken signal, asking if further physical contact is acceptable - and when Foggy hums Matt takes his hand gently. His fingers are deft as they probe over his tender wrist and hand, feeling along the scrapes on his knuckles with a concentrated frown.

"Doesn't feel like you broke anything," Matt announces. "You're lucky, it's a pretty easy thing to do when you go bare knuckles with a skull. The vegetables will help with the swelling though, because once all the adrenaline wears off you're going to be hurting more than you already do." Foggy opens his mouth but Matt beats him to it with a smirk. "Dad was a boxer, remember?"

"Right," Foggy says. He presses the bag of frozen vegetables against the back of his hand and bites back a hiss as the cold penetrates through his already swelling joints. "Dude, it's a shame you're blind though, you totally missed out on seeing some crazy mad ninja skills."

Matt snorts a laugh, loud and inelegant like it escaped without his notice. "Yeah, sure," he says, shaking his head, humoring him. But his wide smile and the light brush of hand over his shoulder are fond, and Foggy can read the words there that aren't being said. The ones Matt's too proud to say just yet. _Thanks_. Somehow, in that moment, Foggy can't feel bad at all about breaking his no-violence streak.

Some things are worth defending.


End file.
